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Outstanding post, BJ. Our 328 should be arriving within the next 10 days. It has both HUD and navigation. I have saved your post so I can implement it and make my wife's life simpler. She is one of those people that's afraid to use anything new, although we've had nav in our last two cars, we haven't had a car with iDrive yet.

Buttons 1-3: I do a lot of driving with the nav and like to have a quick ability to toggle between full screen and the two most important split-screens.

Buttons 4-5: I like having one-push access to instantly start one of the three audio input modes. Prevents the need to hit "Radio" and then scroll down to "Satellite" or "AM". If you make the shortcut from your list of Presets on the HUD you can scroll through all the different stations regardless of what source they come from. Same for iPod, starts playing last position, HUD for song lists.

Buttons 6-8: One touch ability to navigate Home, list of directions much easier to find, and end navigation.

Buttons 1-3: I do a lot of driving with the nav and like to have a quick ability to toggle between full screen and the two most important split-screens.

Buttons 4-5: I like having one-push access to instantly start one of the three audio input modes. Prevents the need to hit "Radio" and then scroll down to "Satellite" or "AM". If you make the shortcut from your list of Presets on the HUD you can scroll through all the different stations regardless of what source they come from. Same for iPod, starts playing last position, HUD for song lists.

Buttons 6-8: One touch ability to navigate Home, list of directions much easier to find, and end navigation.

1. Radio Presets
2. Nav Map View
6. Eco Pro Analyzer. Been playing with it a bit, honestly this is gonna be booted out for something more useful.
7. Silly Hybrid animations because every passenger wants to see "that Prius screen"
8. Trip Computer

I presume that the shortcut buttons are saved with the driver's key. Where as I might have a button set to a local sports station, my wife might have the same button set for NPR. Am I right about this? Once I've got the station I want, can I scroll through other other preset radio stations, or is it better to set the button as jdong has above, "1. Radio Presets."

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Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. Will Rogers

I presume that the shortcut buttons are saved with the driver's key. Where as I might have a button set to a local sports station, my wife might have the same button set for NPR. Am I right about this? Once I've got the station I want, can I scroll through other other preset radio stations, or is it better to set the button as jdong has above, "1. Radio Presets."

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Yes, they are key specific. Your fob and your wife's fob will have different discrete preset settings.

I dedicate one key as a shortcut to the radio stations Presets list and it defaults to my favorite station in that list. Then all you have to do is use the scroll wheel on the steering wheel and change stations on the HUD. It opens up the rest of the shortcut keys for things other than radio stations.

Your wife can make her own list of Presets that will be specific to her key, so her default favorite station can be NPR whereas yours might be sports radio.

(Note to others reading this: the radio Presets is a list of 40 radio stations that you can customize in iDrive. The shortcut keys are the 1-8 buttons on the dashboard. They are two separate things.)

Still haven't figured out the buttons, time to read the user's manual amidst holiday festivities.

The buttons are merely shortcuts to almost every function in the iDrive system so that you have one-button access and don't have to drill through numerous menus to get to them.

Many owners think of them merely as radio station buttons, and they are so much more than that.

As an example, BMW has buried the function that shows you the full, sequential list of turn-by-turn directions when you are navigating to a destination. It's there, but it requires a whole bunch of option button presses, wheel turns, back buttons, etc. Once you've located the function in iDrive, you merely put the focus (the red box) on that item and then press and hold a corresponding 1-8 shortcut button and its now there at your fingertips. Very cool to have a car that offers that level of customization.

wait, how do you get entertainment details on the split screen? From what I've seen I only have the option to turn it on or off but not whats displayed so its always navigation.

From memory....you start your music playing, then go to the Radio screen, then hit the option button, and then the split screen option for entertainment details appears.

You have to go to either the iPod screen or the Radio screen in iDrive in order to find the specific shortcut that says turn "entertainment details" split screen. That's how I can toggle between the two split screen displays using buttons 2 and 3 on the center stack.

If that doesn't work let me know, and I'll go down to the garage and play with it and figure out how I got there.

You would think 8 buttons is enough, and honestly, I don't think they should add anymore, because once you start having more than 8, then they're probably going over the top...

But, right off the top of my head, I see a need for 3 buttons dedicated to my family. 1) Wife's cell phone, 2) Daughter's cell phone, 3) Son's cell phone.

Plus, I'd like to add several channels for Sirius, and I like all those that BJ put out there...

I figured out a way to prioritize cell phone numbers so that they appear the moment you hit the Phone button on the iDrive controller. As result, you don't need to tie up any of the 1-8 console shortcut buttons for that function.

The way it works now, you hit Phone, it defaults to the address book, but it's in alphabetical order. So many of the favorites that you would be dialing frequently are buried hundreds of entries below.

The workaround for this is to add a "period" before the name of the address book entry. iDrive prioritizes certain symbols ahead of letters and numbers. So on my iPhone, I've added eight duplicate phone numbers and changed the names thusly:

"Home" is duplicated as .Home

"My Wife" is now split as .Wife Mobile and .Wife Work

Once you set up these duplicates with just phone numbers and add the "period" before the first letter of the person's name, they will appear on the very first screen the second you hit the phone button on the iDrive controller.

From an iPhone standpoint, the duplicates do not appear in your favorites and don't add clutter to your core address book on that device.

I figured out a way to prioritize cell phone numbers so that they appear the moment you hit the Phone button on the iDrive controller. As result, you don't need to tie up any of the 1-8 console shortcut buttons for that function.

The way it works now, you hit Phone, it defaults to the address book, but it's in alphabetical order. So many of the favorites that you would be dialing frequently are buried hundreds of entries below.

The workaround for this is to add a "period" before the name of the address book entry. iDrive prioritizes certain symbols ahead of letters and numbers. So on my iPhone, I've added eight duplicate phone numbers and changed the names thusly:

"Home" is duplicated as .Home

"My Wife" is now split as .Wife Mobile and .Wife Work

Once you set up these duplicates with just phone numbers and add the "period" before the first letter of the person's name, they will appear on the very first screen the second you hit the phone button on the iDrive controller.

From an iPhone standpoint, the duplicates do not appear in your favorites and don't add clutter to your core address book on that device.

I figured out a way to prioritize cell phone numbers so that they appear the moment you hit the Phone button on the iDrive controller. As result, you don't need to tie up any of the 1-8 console shortcut buttons for that function.

The way it works now, you hit Phone, it defaults to the address book, but it's in alphabetical order. So many of the favorites that you would be dialing frequently are buried hundreds of entries below.

The workaround for this is to add a "period" before the name of the address book entry. iDrive prioritizes certain symbols ahead of letters and numbers. So on my iPhone, I've added eight duplicate phone numbers and changed the names thusly:

"Home" is duplicated as .Home

"My Wife" is now split as .Wife Mobile and .Wife Work

Once you set up these duplicates with just phone numbers and add the "period" before the first letter of the person's name, they will appear on the very first screen the second you hit the phone button on the iDrive controller.

From an iPhone standpoint, the duplicates do not appear in your favorites and don't add clutter to your core address book on that device.